


Feel the Tide Turning

by mistyzeo



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Case Fic, Charity Auctions, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Grumpy Old Men, Happy Ending, Husbands, Idiots in Love, Intercrural Sex, Love Confessions, M/M, Mystery, Older Characters, Requited Love, Retirement, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:47:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyzeo/pseuds/mistyzeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1920: the Great War is over, and Sherlock Holmes has retreated to his cottage in Sussex in search of privacy and quiet.  But a mystery is unfolding in the little village of Fulworth, and Holmes can't resist getting involved.  Having John Watson at his side during a rare weekend visit is a further temptation, and together they delve into a case of murder and mayhem that threatens the whole town.  The reminder of their younger days and the excitement that first brought them together rekindles dormant affection, and long-suffered secrets are reluctantly, inevitably revealed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Friday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tweedisgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/gifts).



> Written for the [Help Syria auction on LJ hosted by Kate Lear](http://help-syria.livejournal.com/). Many thanks to [corpse_reviver2](http://corpsereviver2.tumblr.com/) and [thevelvetdays](http://thevelvetdays.tumblr.com/) for beta reading and consultation; remaining errors are mine and are up for correction. Title from Mumford & Sons, because duh.

Sherlock Holmes was waiting for me at the train station in Fulworth in a tweed jacket and flat cap, looking inordinately pleased with himself.  As I disembarked, I wondered whether this badly-disguised expression of glee was at his own ridiculous get-up—which ten years earlier he'd have scoffed at—or at my own arrival.  It had been nearly three months since I'd seen him, and the country air seemed to be better and better for him every time.  He was as skinny as a reed, and his once-raven hair was almost entirely grey, but when he shook my hand his grip was like iron, in no way diminished from his younger years.

"My dear Watson," he said, folding my hand in both of his and looking earnestly into my face with those piercing silver eyes of his, "how glad I am to see you."

"Holmes," I said, my heart beating in my throat, and we embraced, somewhat unexpectedly, patting one another on the back.  His body under his suit was whipcord strong, the muscles in his shoulders well built from long hours out in his apiary, lifting and carrying pieces of the massive beehives around.

"You're tired," he said, pulling away but not letting go of my arms, "and you haven't eaten.  Come, come, I've had lunch prepared at the cottage."

He plucked my carpetbag from the ground at my feet and carried it through the station to his automobile waiting outside.  He was parked directly in front of the station, blocking a man trying to squeeze a carriage through, and he paid it absolutely no mind.  He tossed my bag into the boot and opened the passenger side door for me.

"There you are," he said, giving me a hand up without asking if I needed it.  I did: my old Jezail bullet had been particularly aggravated of late, and sitting on the train for an hour had stiffened my muscles intolerably. His hand in mine was warm and dry, calloused in new places that had nothing to do with his violin, and I gave him a grateful squeeze before I let go. The contact was achingly familiar, and I couldn't credit the little spark of pleasure that it gave me.

Once I was settled, Holmes went around to the front of the car and gave it a few cranks to get it running, and then fairly hopped in beside me.  He engaged the gears and we pulled away from the kerb and out onto the main road through town.

We did not talk on the way to Holmes's little cottage, for the noise of the engine was too much and conversation would have been lost entirely, no thanks, in part, to Holmes's diminished hearing.  I had wondered, when we were younger men, whether the bangs of his more explosive experiments would come back to haunt him, but it was impossible to say whether they were the direct cause.  He adjusted to the loss admirably well, however, and had no qualms demanding that a person repeat themselves or speak louder; in fact, the speaker often had the distinct impression it was their own fault Holmes couldn't hear them.  Holmes's personality could do that to a fellow.

The cottage sat on the cliffs overlooking the sea, surrounded on three sides by a mile or more of open fields and farmland.  It was very isolated, and Holmes preferred it that way.  He had a few neighbours, their homes visible from the tops of nearby hills, but his immediate vicinity was entirely unoccupied, save Holmes's own little house.  The front door and the windows of the sitting room faced the setting sun, while the south wall was taken up with another enormous window and a door out onto a stone patio.  A path led from the patio down to the edge of the cliff, and then along the cliffs to Holmes's apiary, several hundred yards from the house.  On the north side of the house were the bedrooms: Holmes's own, and the guest room, which also housed a portion of Holmes's extensive library crammed into not enough bookshelves. Onto the eastern side of the house was tacked a kitchen and a lean-to full of firewood. A little outhouse sat a dozen yards beyond the kitchen door.

Lunch was indeed waiting for us on the patio, and there were signs that Holmes's housekeeper, Mrs Bloom, had only recently left.  She was a local woman, younger than Holmes and myself by about thirty years, who put up with Holmes's eccentricities about as well as our beloved Mrs Hudson had done.  She lived a few miles away along the coast, often rode a horse to and from the cottage, and was a singularly gifted cook.  I always thought it was a pity that her talent was wasted on Holmes, but then I was always grateful to have her when I came visiting.

"Mrs Bloom seems to have anticipated your morning hurry," Holmes said as we sat down.

"Holmes," I said, drawing a napkin across my lap, "how ever did you know I hadn't eaten?"  I couldn't imagine anything I was wearing could have given him the least clue, and it certainly wouldn't have been anything I'd said, seeing as he'd deduced it the moment I stepped off the train.

"You took a later train than you usually do," Holmes said, offering me a bowl of grapes, "which suggested to me that you had missed your preferred one."

"I might have chosen to get up later," I protested.  I spread a slice of bread with a mixture of honey and butter that was a distinct danger to my waistline.

Holmes smiled and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin and crossing one leg over the other.  "You might have," he agreed, "but you did not.  That would be very unlike you, my dear man.  Old age has made you exceedingly punctual.  No, you rose at your regular hour this morning and were in the process of shaving when you were interrupted by an urgent summons from a patient."

"How—" I started, and he reached up and tapped the corner of his jaw.  I put my fingers to that spot on my own face and found a smear of shaving cream that I had missed as I'd wiped it away.

"You picked up your bag," Holmes went on, "and hurried out the door, knowing that you would not be home again before your train.  You walked to your surgery for the consultation, which was more hands-on than you had anticipated."

I stared at him in wonder, my meal forgotten.

"Your jacket sleeves have creases in them where they were rolled up," he said smugly, "and your boots have mud on them that is prevalent in your neighbourhood, but nowhere else; if you'd been going straight to the station you'd not have walked so many blocks and then taken a cab."

"Incredible," I said.  "Which patient was it?"

"Watson," Holmes scolded, but then he realised I was teasing him.  He pursed his lips against a smile and I laughed outright.

"Quite right," I said, taking a bite of the bread and honey finally.  "Every bit of it.  I do miss you doing that, you know."

His expression changed briefly, and if I hadn't been looking right at him I'd have missed it.  For a moment his eyebrows drew together and his gaze clouded, but an instant later his face was clear and smiling again.

"Well," he said, "that is why I venture to exercise my powers upon you as soon as I am able."

We sat in companionable silence for a while, and Holmes deigned to have a few bites of the meal that had been left for us.  Mrs Bloom had been careful to include some of his favourite dishes, no doubt in order to keep him eating.  I wished, not for the first time, that I could be at his side as I once was, to be responsible for the care and keeping of him.  It was a ridiculous notion, and I pushed it aside, as always. He was his own man, and very content to stay that way.

"Should you like to go for a walk?" Holmes asked, when we had finished and done our part in tidying up by carrying the dishes into the kitchen.

"A slow walk," I said, fetching my stick from beside the door where I'd left it.

"They are my favourite kind," he said, and we set off down the path that led to the cliffs.

#

Half a mile east of the cottage there was a slope that led down to the sand, and at my suggestion we took it.  I sat down on a rock to take off my boots and socks and to roll up the legs of my trousers, and Holmes, with a shrug, joined me.  We left our shoes by the path and walked barefoot almost to the edge of the water.  The sand was smooth and cool between my toes, and the salt air was fresh upon my face.  

We strolled along the beach for some time, conversing about the time we had recently spent apart.  The Great War was only just concluded, the Peace of Versailles signed a year earlier, and life in London was beginning to move again at its regular pace. Holmes and I had rekindled our friendship in the last five years, when he had been dragged out of retirement, away from his bees and solitude, and I had been serving my country out of Charing Cross Hospital. Holmes could never tell me what he was doing beyond acknowledging with a sneer that it was "government work," (a sneer that did not fool me, for I could see how hollow his eyes were, how thin his face). For my own part, my posting at Charing Cross seemed a lucky one, one I did not deserve, and I suspected it had been orchestrated with the help of my friend's estimable brother.

Having him within my sphere again had made all the difference during the war. I had spared a thought for our old rooms at Baker Street, but never gave into the ridiculous urge to go back and stare at the outside of the building itself. No, Holmes was what I had been missing, though it took having him returned to me to make me realise it.

It was my fault, however, that several months had passed since our last meeting. I returned to private practice after the war, going in with a fellow medico from the hospital, and we had a plethora of patients that kept us busy. Holmes had slipped away once his particular talents were no longer in demand, and now I was hungry for knowledge of his life here. He told me of his bees and his monographs, and seemed for the world entirely content to be alone with his thoughts most of the time. He admitted that he missed London occasionally, but couldn't imagine returning there for any lengthy period of time. Not at his age, and certainly not after the war.

Distantly, over the sound of the waves and the wind, we heard a faint voice calling Holmes's name.  We turned as one to see, far off behind us, the form of a person, running, waving his arms.

As the figure approached, I realised it was a boy, no older than ten.  He came tearing up to us, kicking sand out behind him, and skidded to a halt, breathing hard.

"Mr Holmes," he panted, "Mr Holmes."

"Yes, what is it?" Holmes said.  I could see the wheels turning in his head already, deducing half of what the boy had to say before he'd even caught his breath.

"Mr Holmes," the boy said again, and I watched Holmes suppress a simultaneous expression and exclamation of impatience.  "It's Mr Butterfield, sir."

"What about Mr Butterfield?" Holmes demanded.

The boy stopped and stared at him, as if he couldn't believe what he was about to report: "He's dead, sir."

#

Holmes and I could not rush along the beach the way the boy could, so we sent him back whence he'd come and followed at our slower pace.  Holmes clearly wanted to hurry, and I was limbered up from the first half of our stroll, but my leg was not what they used to be, and the sand made walking even more difficult.

"Go on," I urged him, "I will wait for you at the cottage."

"Nonsense," Holmes said, taking my arm and allowing me to lean on him, "Watson, for the first time in rather a long time, I have you on hand for what may turn out to be a very interesting case.  I will not waste the opportunity by allowing you to wait at home."

"You can tell it'll be interesting already?" I asked.

"Mr Butterfield is not the first person in town to turn up dead in the past few weeks," Holmes said.  "The first was a man named Arthur Lawrenson, found in his home by his mother with whom he lived.  The local police called it an accident, for indeed it appeared very likely that it had been an accident, but there were one or two facts which did not exactly line up with the others."

"I don't suppose you'll tell me which facts," I said.

He smiled.  "Not yet; not until we see what this second incident might hold."

We gathered our shoes and socks at the bottom of the cliff and climbed slowly up to the top again.  Holmes went ahead to fetch the car, and together we drove the few miles into town.  We arrived at the scene about the same time as the boy, and were greeted by a young constable who introduced himself to me as Jeremiah Thorton.  He and Holmes were apparently familiar with one another, for as we shook hands Thorton stepped aside without a word to let Holmes by.

"Doctor Watson," Thorton was saying, "It's a pleasure, a real pleasure.  I read your stories growing up, and when I met Mr Holmes I had such a shock.  He's not exactly as you described him, sir, if you don't mind my saying."

"I don't mind at all," I said, leaning on my stick and smiling at Holmes's back as he stepped carefully around the layout of the room.  "You're absolutely right."

"I mean, he's as brilliant as you say," Thorton went on earnestly, "only, I expected him to be a bit more standoffish.  Oh, he likes his privacy, sure enough, but I've found him very pleasant to be around.  Very pleasant indeed."

"Thorton," Holmes said from where he was bending over the fireplace grate, "How many people have been in this room since Butterfield was discovered?"

Thornton screwed up his face, calculating, and then said, "Six, Mr Holmes."

"Six!" Holmes cried in dismay.  "What on earth for?"

"Well, there was his wife, Mrs Butterfield," Thornton said, "and his daughter Miss Butterfield--"

I glanced at Holmes who rolled his eyes expressively at me.  There was a gleam in his eye that I had very much missed, and I hid an inappropriately timed smile in a strategic smoothing of my moustache.

"The daughter's fiancée, Mr Collins," Thornton went on, not seeing this exchange, "Constable Parker who reported to the scene when Tom came and got us, myself, and yourself, sir.  Oh, and Doctor Watson, but I wouldn’t quite say he had been in the room just yet."

Holmes gave a great sigh and levered himself down onto the ground beside the late Mr Butterfield with a hand on the nearest chair arm.  He was favouring his right knee slightly, and I remembered he’d mentioned a fall.  Six months earlier he’d slipped on ice on the patio facing the sea, and I felt abruptly guilty that I hadn’t been around to see that he get it looked at earlier than he did.  He was my friend, and I was neglecting him.

Then again, he’d moved to Sussex without consulting me, leaving his-- our-- old rooms in Baker Street to be let anew.  My practice had been keeping me quite busy at the time, and I’d nearly missed his departure altogether. At the last minute I'd managed to get my neighbour, Doctor Bayne, to cover my patients for the day, and I'd rushed to Baker Street to say goodbye. He was already on the stoop when I alighted from the cab, and for a long, silent minute we stood in the open doorway, looking up at our old landing.

"I shall miss it all very much," he had admitted, glancing at me. "Very much indeed."

I gave him a ride to the train station with his last trunk— the rest of it having gone on ahead— and we shook hands on the platform.

"Come and see the house soon, my boy," he said, "as soon as you can get away."

"I will," I promised, but it was several months before I found the time to go.

"Watson," Holmes said, snapping me out of my reverie. He was looking at me expectantly from his position on the floor. "Do come tell me what you make of this."

I made my way over to him, careful not to disturb anything on the carpet or tread on anything that might have been a footprint. I knelt carefully beside him and leaned forward on my hands. "What is it?"

"As a medical man," said he, "would you do me the favour of assessing the situation?"

"Certainly," I said, and began to do just that.

Mr Butterfield had fallen in the middle of his sitting room, face down, about three feet from the safety of his couch. At the time he had been carrying a tray of biscuits and tea, which had spilled all over the carpet. There were two teacups on the floor, both intact. Butterfield had not struck his head on anything but the floor, but from the way he had fallen it appeared as though he had not attempted to catch himself. It was as if he had fainted. Perhaps striking his head against the floor had been sufficient to kill him. It was certainly possible.

"What's unusual about this situation, Holmes?" I asked, when I had relayed that theory.

"Smell his mouth," Holmes suggested.

I did. I hadn't encountered such a smell in a long time, but the almond aroma brought a suggestion immediately to mind. "You think it's cyanide."

"I think it's very likely."

"How was it administered?"

He shook his head. "I won't guess," he said, "although the teacups suggest themselves." He raised his voice. "Thorton, was Mrs Butterfield at home when her husband died?"

"No," Thorton said from across the room, "she and Miss Butterfield were in town."

"Excellent." Holmes got to his feet once more, favouring that knee, and gave me a hand up as well. "So, alone in the house, but serving tea for two."

"They were on their way home," Thorton said. "Mrs Butterfield says they always have tea around this time."

Holmes's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing in response. Instead, he said, "I want the full coroner's report, when it's ready, and if you take any photographs please send them along as well."

Thorton showed us out of the house. "Thank you for coming, Mr Holmes, Doctor."

"You were right to call me," Holmes said. "There is something unusual happening here, and I don't want to waste any time. Someone was here with him before he died and possibly even _when_ he died. They left very few traces of their presence, but Mr Butterfield does not appear to have been in any distress save that moment of expiration."

"Someone he knew, perhaps," Thorton said, shaking Holmes's hand. "I'll keep it in mind."

#

We drove back to Holmes's little cottage, each ruminating deeply on what we'd seen. If Butterfield had been preparing tea for his wife and daughter's return, why had he only put two cups on the tray? I didn't have enough information, as usual, but in this case Holmes was miles ahead of me. He was familiar with the victim, the setting, the neighbourhood, and I was not. When we pulled up to the cottage, Holmes leapt out and hurried inside. I was left to follow, and when I entered the sitting room I found him pulling down several thick folios from the bookcase by the window.

"What are you doing now?" I asked, taking a seat on the sofa.

"Looking for a connection," Holmes said, and laid the folios in my lap. I began opening them, and discovered a local extension of his good old index from our sitting room at Baker Street. Here were family trees of all the landed families in the area. Here were lists of all the local committees, and Fulworth's social calendar. There were pages and pages of observations of all the local characters written up in Holmes's smooth script, indicating that he had copied these notes from a smaller notebook and had taken the time to organise them. He had thoughts and deductions about more people than I could believe were local residents, but they were sorted meticulously into families and districts.

Holmes sat down on the floor in front of the fire with a grunt, and laid another set of folios on the rug. 

"Let's start with committees," he said, indicating a folder I was holding. "We are looking for some place that Mr Lawrenson and Mr Butterfield overlap, whatever it may be."

"Why are you so convinced that there is somewhere they overlap?" I asked, opening the folder all the same.

"Because they were both meant to look like accidents," Holmes said, "Butterfield's more sloppily done, of course, but both situations hinted at the presence of another person."

"You think the same person—"

"Or persons," Holmes interrupted.

"Or persons," I agreed, "was targeting them both."

"It is early to theorise," he said, "but that is the direction in which my suspicions lie."

We started shifting through the folder together, but Holmes's thought processes soon outstripped my own, and he began rifling through a dozen other files. I got up from the sofa without his notice and fetched a paperback novel from my bag to read while he worked.

After about an hour, Holmes looked up suddenly from his seat on the floor. He was entirely surrounded by papers, and it resembled our sitting room at Baker Street so strongly that I felt as though I'd been transported through time. I looked up from my book, eyebrow raised, ready for a revelation.

"Watson," he said sheepishly, "this must be terribly boring for you."

"Not at all!" I exclaimed. "My goodness, Holmes, please don't think I need to be entertained. Should I be helping?"

"No!" he said, and then looked embarrassed that he'd answered so quickly. "That is— your assistance would be very valuable—"

I smirked, and he trailed off. "I'll leave it to you," I said. "I trust you have the matter under control."

Holmes's smile fairly lit up the room.

We ate a cold supper scavenged out of the icebox. I fed Holmes's to him there on the floor, stepping carefully over and around his stacks of papers. He nibbled absently at the bread and ham, downed the glass of water in a single sustained gulp, and thanked me with a nod. I wondered who made sure he ate, during the times when his housekeeper was not around to nag him. Again I thought it ought to be me. I supped on what Holmes ignored, and did the washing up alone. Then I went back to the sitting room and resumed my watch over Holmes's investigation.

At some point, I fell asleep. Sitting there in the armchair with a fire in the grate to ward off the cool summer evening and Holmes muttering to himself and shuffling papers, I felt so at home that I drifted straight off. I imagined I could still hear Holmes talking, only now he was talking to me but I wasn't getting any of the words. I only knew that I felt safe, and warm, and comfortable, and everything was as it should be.

When I opened my eyes again, Holmes was watching me. The paper he was holding had gone limp, forgotten, and his gaze was soft and fond. He smiled when I blinked and focused on him. His noble grey hair gleamed in the firelight, swept away from his fine, high forehead with the same pomade he has used since we were young men in the '80's, while a pair half-moon spectacles perched on his beak of a nose reflected that light back again.

"What time is it?" I asked, my voice a rough croak. I cleared my throat.

"Nearly midnight," Holmes murmured. "You should get to bed, old man."

I got to my feet with some minor effort, and stretched. "Aren't you coming?"

He made a little noise, a huff of a laugh, and said, "No, I don't think so."

"Are you going to need a hand to get off the floor?" I asked. "You're not as young as you think you are."

"I know my limits perfectly," Holmes scoffed. "Be off with you. I shall see you in the morning."

I slept like a log that night, knowing that Holmes was in the other room up to his old tricks. It was so strange to think that only sixteen hours earlier I had been rushing through my morning routine, hurrying along the streets of London, attending a patient—doing such mundane, everyday things—and now, only a short train ride away, my old life of adventure rushed back to me. I almost regretted my faith that Holmes would have the whole thing sorted by dawn, for it meant that I would have to leave it behind that much sooner.


	2. Saturday

I awoke with the sun shining brilliantly in at my window, and a peek at my pocket watch showed it to be a little past eight. I heard the sound of movement from the other room that indicated Holmes was awake and possibly eating breakfast, which suggested he might not have sat up all night working after all. I pulled on my dressing gown and slippers and opened the door.

The sitting room was empty, but the door to the little washroom was standing ajar. Holmes had just gone in there, and he was now standing at the wash basin in his trousers and nothing else. The looseness of the trousers around his hips suggested that he did not even have them fastened. His braces were hanging slack down his thighs. He was washing his face, a towel pressed over his eyes, and a bead of water was running down the length of his spine.

I studied him, thinking nothing of it. His body was as I had felt it to be upon our initial embrace: straight and skinny, his habitual neglect evident but not so alarming as it had sometimes been. His skin had been darkened by the sun, and I suspected he spent plenty of time half dressed, working outside. All his claims of despising the country air were gone like so much smoke. He was also marked by age: at sixty-six, and with plenty of life left in him, the lean smoothness I would have been enchanted by as a young man was gone, replaced by a weathered strength that nonetheless held my eye. There were scars on his back that I didn't recognise, and one in particular gave me pause: there was a long, jagged cut along the lower border of his ribs that looked very much like a narrowly avoided stab wound. It had healed badly, perhaps been infected, and was now shining, like a brand, on his skin. I should have been there, I thought, to patch that up. That was my responsibility, and having been unable to follow him was something I could have fought harder against.

It was at that moment that Holmes turned and caught me staring at him from the doorway. His trousers were indeed unfastened, and they were so low on his hips I was certain they were going to slip to the floor any moment. I blinked, embarrassed to have been lingering like that, and stepped away from the lintel.

"Good morning," I said, knowing it sounded awkward. "I'm sorry, I didn't— I thought you might've heard me."

"No," he said, "but good morning to you all the same. Give me a moment, I'll be just out. I have news for you."

I crossed the sitting room to the south window and looked out over the sea. It was sparkling in the morning sun, as blue as a very rare carbuncle. I thought, for reasons I couldn't parse, about the dimples in the small of Holmes's back.

He came in a minute later, fully dressed save for his jacket, and bade me sit down and have something to eat.

"I know there's no getting you out the door until you're fed," he said, sitting down across from me with a slip of paper in his hand. "But don't dawdle."

"You said you had news." I spread a slice of toast with jam and bit into it, pouring myself a cup of coffee at the same time.

Holmes flashed me a grim smile. "I discovered, a little after you had gone to bed, that Mr Lawrenson was on the committee for the annual flower show, with Mrs Butterfield. That was the closest social connection I could find, and so I went to sleep satisfied."

"That's splendid," I said with my mouth full.

"This morning," Holmes went on, "I was awakened by the boy coming by with this. I'm surprised you didn't hear him at the door."

I shrugged. "What is it?"

"Well," Holmes said, passing it over, "I have fallen prey to the sin of theorising, which you know I abhor."

The note was from Jeremiah Thorton, and read as follows:

> _Mr Holmes,_
> 
> _Please do us the honour of coming as soon as you can to Goldenrod House._
> 
> _Stephen Dunlow found dead of apparent accident, but circumstances are very suspicious. Could use your expertise._
> 
> _Gratefully yours,_
> 
> _J.T._
> 
> _P.S. Bring the Doctor if you like, I will vouch for both of you._

"It's very kind of him to invite me along," said I.

"Yes," Holmes said, pushing my coffee towards me again. "I imagine he's overjoyed to have you around."

"He's very keen on you," I said. I finished the coffee in a long swallow, and found Holmes looking at me with a strange, confused expression on his face. "He read my stories," I explained.

"Yes, I know that," Holmes said. "He wouldn't shut up about it when I first met him. What do you mean he's keen on me?"

"I don't know," I said, standing up from the table. "He just seems to like you a great deal. Maybe he's overwhelmed by the notion of a celebrity in his own backyard, turning up at crime scenes to be a nuisance."

Holmes rolled his eyes. "Get dressed, and we'll go."

#

Goldenrod House was a cottage much like Holmes's, a mile or so from the town and set upon the bluffs.  We drove up and found Thorton and two other police constables on site.  One of them was comforting a young woman of about twenty-five years, who was sobbing pitifully into the shoulder of his uniform coat.

"My God," muttered Holmes, "they're starting to look like Scotland Yard with their punctuality and their stampeding."

"Perhaps they're trying to impress you," I suggested.  Holmes came 'round the car without a thought and opened my door for me, offering me a hand down from the seat.  I took it, despite not really needing his help, and he blinked at my hand in his as though he'd not considered the consequences of such an action.  I let go with a smile, and he folded his hands behind his back.

"Well I wish they wouldn't," he said under his breath as we approached the house.  "Good morning, Thorton."

"Good morning, Mr Holmes, good morning, Doctor.  How are you this morning?"

"Better than Mr Dunlow, I imagine," Holmes said.

"Quite well, thank you Constable," I said, giving Holmes a nudge.

Thorton smiled despite the situation, his round face creasing with pleasure, and ushered us, not through the front door as Holmes had apparently anticipated, but down a path that lead to the shore.  The tide was low, and in the sand lay the figure of a man, surrounded by footprints.  This could only be Stephen Dunlow.  He was wearing a pair of swimming trunks; we had passed his shirt in a heap by the rocks as we’d left the path.

"When was this discovered?" Holmes asked.

"His sister, Miss Dunlow, decided to surprise him and come on an earlier train," Thorton said.  "She turned up about an hour ago and found the house empty.  Remembering he usually takes a morning swim, she down to meet him on the beach, and discovered him here, like this."

"This is very similar to that matter with the man-o'-war," Holmes muttered, crouching by the body.  He took in Dunlow's prone form very carefully, looking at his hands, his trunks, his wet hair.  It appeared that the police had dragged him up from the water’s edge, though the path his body had taken had been mostly wiped away by the surf.  His face was blue and wet, and I shook my head sadly.  That a man so clearly a powerful and comfortable a swimmer should be drowned was a plain tragedy.

Holmes looked up at Thorton. "What about this suggests that it was not an accident?"

Thorton frowned. "Stephen Dunlow is a capable swimmer, Mr Holmes," he said, "and the sea was calm today."

"Even the strongest swimmers can occasionally misjudge their own abilities," Holmes said.

Thorton shook his head. "There's more to it," he said, "I'm sure there is."

"You cannot theorise before the facts," Holmes said, pushing himself to his feet. "I'd have thought you, at least, might have picked up on that."

Thorton said nothing, but I could tell he was going to stand his ground on this one. 

“Help me turn him over,” Holmes said to me.  He took hold of Dunlow’s shoulders and I his feet, and together we rolled him onto his back.  

We regarded the dead man for a moment in silence, and then Thorton said, "I'll have to get Doctor Fisher down here immediately."

"Please, do that," Holmes said, shooing the young man away.

When he had disappeared up the path, Holmes said, "Tell me what you see."

I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of kneeling in the wet sand, so I did a cursory examination from a standing position. Dunlow's bedraggled appearance no doubt said more to Holmes than it did to me. His closed eyes were sunken and ringed in blue. His lips, too, were almost purple. There was sand at the corners of his mouth. I looked more closely, pried open his mouth with my fingers, and found sand upon his tongue.

"He certainly drowned," I said eventually, "but if he were so familiar with the sea…"

"Oh, not you too," Holmes grumbled.

"Perhaps he was drugged," I suggested.

He stopped and stared at me. Then he knelt in the sand at Dunlow's side. We were far enough from the edge of the surf that he was not immediately soaking wet, but the knees of his trousers became decidedly damp. He bent and put his face very close to the drowned man's, and I realised Holmes was smelling his mouth.

"Nothing," Holmes said with a noise of disgust. "Seawater and nothing else. Damn. Back to the house, Watson." He pushed himself to his feet with a grimace.

"Have you got everything you can?" I asked.

"For the moment," Holmes replied.  "As distasteful as it is, this third incident does make more of a pattern of my two previous data points."

#

We returned to the house, where the sister of the murdered man was now sitting in the sitting room, drying her face on a handkerchief and speaking with Thorton and the other constables. Thorton waved us over.

"Miss Dunlow, this is Mr Sherlock Holmes," said he, "and Dr John Watson. They're assisting us in the investigation."

Miss Dunlow's face was a picture of shocked recognition at the sound of Holmes's name, but it quickly crumpled into misery as she began to weep anew.

"Oh, Mr Holmes," she said, "I'm ashamed to say I am not at all happy to meet you."

"Perfectly understandable, Miss Dunlow," Holmes said, sitting across from her and taking her hand. "I am only needed in the most unpleasant of circumstances."

She nodded and wiped her face once more. She was a lovely young woman, despite the swollen eyes and trembling lips. Chestnut ringlets framed her round, sweet face, and the rest of her hair was drawn up into a tight knot at the back of her head. She had full cheeks and a delicate nose that was turned up slightly at the tip. Her light blue jacket was laced down the front and at her sleeve cuffs, and her skirt was cut into little triangles at the hem in a modern fashion. Her shoes and spats were coated with sand, as were two spots on the front of her skirt where she had knelt. Once I might have described her as one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, but now she looked like she could be my daughter, frightened and alone. My urge to comfort her was entirely paternal.

"Please, if you can, tell Doctor Watson exactly what happened, from the beginning," Holmes said.

I gave him a sharp glance, but he was already patting me on the shoulder and turning away to poke around Dunlow's sitting room. I turned my attention back to Miss Dunlow.

"I visit Stephen once a month," she began, her voice quavering. "I have a position as a governess in Wivelsfield, fifteen miles north and west of here, and the train ride is very convenient. I usually have a half day on Saturday as well as Sunday, but this week Mr and Mrs Henlopen have gone to Scotland to visit Mr Henlopen's aunt and they took the children. I was free as of this morning until Monday morning, and so I decided to take an early train and spend as much time as I could with my brother."

She gave a quiet sob and steadied herself.

"I came in a dog cart from the station, and sent it away as soon as I arrived. I expected to find Stephen at home, but when he didn't answer the door I remembered that he likes to take a morning swim, when the weather is good."

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?" I asked, as she paused. "Noises from outside the house, footprints in the mud, anything like that?"

Miss Dunlow frowned and thought, but a moment later she was shaking her head. "No," she said, "nothing like that."

"Could you hear the dogcart leaving?" Holmes asked from across the room.

"Yes," she said, "I heard him reach the main road."

"Very good, please continue."

Miss Dunlow took a deep breath. "I left my suitcase at the door and walked down the path towards the ocean." She paused, and tears began to spill once more down her cheeks. "There isn't much else to say. I found Stephen lying on the beach, and he was so still. I knew he was dead, Mister Holmes. I was too frightened to try and— and see if— but I knew he wasn't breathing."

"Hush now," I said, drawing the girl under my arm and embracing her. She buried her face in my lapel and sobbed, and Holmes met my eyes over her shoulder, sympathetic, but for whose plight— hers or mine— I wasn't sure.

"She ran all the way back to town," Thorton put in. "I sent for you immediately."

"Immediately?" I asked. "The note said the circumstances were suspicious. You mean you hadn't seen them yet?"

Thorton looked embarrassed. "I heard her story and I made the decision. Forgive me, Doctor, but three deaths in two weeks in a town like this is very suspicious."

Holmes nodded in agreement. "Watson and I will leave you shortly," he said to Thorton. "We will come down to the station this afternoon to continue this conversation. Miss Dunlow, do you have any other family nearby that you can go to?"

She pulled herself away from Holmes's shoulder and nodded, wiping her eyes on her sodden handkerchief. "My aunt and uncle," she said. "They live in town."

"Do they indeed," Holmes said softly, his eyes going briefly unfocused as he absorbed this information. "We will drive you there. Please, my dear, come with us."

Miss Dunlow sat in the back seat of the car with her suitcase, sniffling bravely as we departed from Goldenrod house. The drive back into Fulworth took only a few minutes, and Holmes escorted Miss Dunlow to her aunt and uncles' doorstep, where he explained the situation and told them he would personally deliver any news he had as soon as he could. When she was safely inside with her newly grieving family, we turned the car for home.

#

"What did you find?" I asked Holmes, when we had arrived once more at his cottage.

"A plate in the sink," Holmes said thoughtfully, pulling off his jacket and draping it over the back of the sofa. "Stephen Dunlow had a visitor who arrived earlier than his sister."

"But she said she didn't see any footprints," I protested.

"She might have not seen any," Holmes said. "People see what they expect to see. Witnesses, Watson, are terribly unreliable."

"And the plate?"

He smiled at me, a secret sort of smile that said he was enjoying this far more than he knew he ought. "There was a trace of white powder on the table," he said, "as thought it had spilled and been wiped away."

"So he was drugged!"

"We shall see," Holmes said. "Now, I have found that the bees make excellent company for thinking, and I believe I will go out and tend to them for a while. You're welcome to come along. Their company is not quite as valuable as your own, my dear fellow."

"Thank you," I said, both for the invitation and the compliment.

Holmes had presented me with his book on the subject of his bees at the conclusion our little encounter with Von Bork of Germany, and I had kept it on my bookshelf beside my own fictionalised publications for several years. His first hive in Sussex had been a rousing success, which led to his second and third. Now he had six hives sitting on the cliff some distance from the house in a carefully maintained meadow. Holmes led the way down a narrow path of trampled grass.

The buzz from the hives could be heard some way off, an ever-increasing drone that eventually eclipsed the rumble of the ocean as we approached. I began to see the bees in the air, and one or two of them stopped off to say hello, landing for a moment on my jacket sleeve and my lapel.

Holmes stopped at a little shed he had built at the edge of the meadow and put on a large hat with a thick veil that covered his head and shoulders. There was only the one, so I followed Holmes at a distance as he approached the hives.

The hives themselves were sturdy wooden boxes set on risers that brought them up to the height of Holmes's elbows. The tops came off and inside were a set of horizontal cross bars that could be removed one at a time. These crossbars were the top of individual frames set about two inches apart, upon which the bees built their comb. Holmes had described the process to me in detail at one point, but I had only retained about half of what he had said. Something about the way they were built made collecting the honey easier than a hive built in an empty box, and was less distressing for the bees.

"Would you like to see how they are doing?" he asked, approaching his oldest hive. It sat closest to the shed, and was the most weathered of the six. I could see insulating hay poking out of the corners.

"With all my heart," said I, craning for a look from a distance.

"They're all right," he said, smiling fondly at me. "They're in a good mood today."

I inched closer, muttering, "How on earth can you tell?"

The bees buzzed lazily around Holmes, landing on his hands and his hat as he opened up the lid and pulled a frame out. The bees were thick on the edges of the frame and the top of the box, and I held my breath in anticipation of Holmes getting stung. Holmes didn't seem concerned in the least, and his slow, deliberate movements set both me and the bees at ease. He lifted the frame and peered at the honeycomb, and then held it out for me to see.

"Very nice," said I. I didn't know what I was looking at.

Holmes replaced the frame and lifted out the next, and then the next, one by one. Then, apparently satisfied, he put the lid back on the box and moved on to the next hive. I recognised a dismissal; he had retreated into his mind again. The motions of tending to the bees had replaced his cocaine injection and, I was pleased to notice, much of his smoking. The tobacco in the house was confined to the ratty old Persian slipper on the mantle, and Holmes's pipe did not travel in his pocket so much.

I walked down to the edge of the cliff and sat, watching the ocean. Its rhythm was hypnotic, soporific, and it was some time later that Holmes touched my shoulder and roused me from some sort of daze.

"Shall we eat, my dear boy?" he asked.

I agreed, and he gripped my hand tightly to help me to my feet. My old wound protested, but a squeeze and a rub got me moving at least, favouring my leg slightly until it had warmed up again. Holmes let me lean on him, saying nothing. It was getting worse, my leg. Inactivity and age were taking their toll. Soon I'd be entirely reliant on a walking stick, perhaps even a crutch. The thought made me push myself, loosen my grip on Holmes's arm, straighten my spine. My leg ached, and Holmes shot me a look, but I carried on, chin up.

Luncheon was a more elaborate affair than our supper the previous night had been. Mrs Bloom had been by while we were out tending the hives, and she had filled the ice box and heated up a meat pie. Holmes cut it in half and served it beside a little pile of lettuces that amounted to a salad—I saw him transfer the leaves by hand to the plates—and we ate on the patio.

"We will have to go back into town soon," he said, when we had finished. "Thorton will have the coroner's report for Butterfield, and I should like to be able to give him some actual guidance on this matter. The clock is ticking, Watson. Two weeks ago this was a tragedy, but now with two more deaths in such close succession, it is an absolute disaster." He put his head into his hands, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration.

"You'll find something," I said. "You always do."

His smile looked forced. "You exaggerate," said he. "You always have."

"I am a professional liar," I admitted. "But I have nothing but confidence in your abilities."

Holmes rose and took my plate away. "Back to work then. Aren't you glad you came 'round for a spot of murder?"

"Yes," I said firmly.

That time, his smile was more genuine.

#

Half an hour later, there was a decided breakthrough in the case.

"I've been going about this all wrong!" Holmes cried, shaking a large sheet of foolscap at me. "I have been looking too narrowly at what these people have in common— interests, committees, things they choose."

"What are you saying?" I asked. "There is something they do not choose?"

"Blood, Watson!" he said, and slapped the paper down on the table. "Lineage. Lawrenson, Butterfield, Dunlow: they're related to the Rutherfords of Hartford Manor, whose estate takes up a good portion of the Seaford Head. Three generations back, there was a slew of daughters, and they were all married off. Second children of second children, and yet there is a direct line up to the house."

It did not take a man of Sherlock Holmes's intellect to understand how that connection would be relevant. "Someone is following the inheritance," I said. "What is the situation at the house now?"

"The Earl is nearly sixty, and a widower. His only son was killed in the war. He hasn't been out of mourning since, and scarcely leaves the house."

"That's not exactly a high risk lifestyle," said I. "And if he has his health, he might be living there for quite some time."

Holmes tapped his long fingertips against his mouth, frowning. "It isn't sensible to theorise now," he said slowly, "but I see two possible outcomes of this situation."

I raised an eyebrow, hoping he would go on. It was rare that he ever laid out his reasoning ahead of the revelation of the solution, but I hoped, as ever, that he might take me into his confidence.

He gave me a wry smile, perhaps reading my thoughts. "The first," he said, and I grinned, despite myself, "is that our culprit is getting everyone else out of way in order to wait patiently for their turn to come 'round."

"The second," I said, following along, "is that Earl Rutherford is in danger for his life."

Holmes nodded solemnly. "I'm afraid we will have to act under the assumption of the latter," he said.

"The timetable of these events is only in the past month," I remembered aloud. "That suggests some degree of urgency, does it not?  
Could the Earl be sick after all, and someone who knows this is eager to clear the field?"

Closing his eyes almost all the way, Holmes thought about this suggestion, entirely motionless in his chair. For a few minutes he was silent, and then he said, "I think you have hit upon something, my dear boy."

"The Earl is sick?"

He shook his head. "I don't know that for certain, but your suggestion that there is some urgency is certainly of merit."

"What do you suggest we do now?"

"Determine the line of inheritance," Holmes said. "Then as quickly as possible, identify the perpetrator of these crimes by process of elimination."

"Though," I said, "perhaps not by the process of elimination they are using."

He stared at me for a moment, frowning, and then gave a great bark of laughter. I beamed at him, strangely pleased with myself.

"Oh, you're a dreadful man," he said, clapping me on the knee and grinning back. "I have missed your pawky humour."

His hand was warm and firm through the fabric of my trousers. "I have missed your appreciation of it," I replied.

#

As soon as we arrived at the police station in town, Thorton came out to usher us into his office.  It was a tiny room with a single window that looked out onto the main road.  The desk was pushed up against the window sill and was entirely covered with papers, which Thorton made an awkward attempt to tidy up as we came in, as though he had just realised they were there.  Holmes stood behind the interview chair and pointed me towards it, which I accepted with a sigh that was not entirely stifled.  I felt the pressure of Holmes's hand on my shoulder, briefly.

"I had Doctor Fisher send me the results of Eustace Butterfield's autopsy as soon as it was completed," Thorton said, finding it among his papers and handing it to Holmes, "and asked him to proceed with Stephen Dunlow's as soon as possible.  Mr Holmes, you have seen the report on Arthur Lawrenson, isn't that right?"

"That is correct," Holmes said.  He scanned the report and handed it to me with a small noise of satisfaction.  When I read it, I saw why.  Our hypothesis of cyanide had been confirmed: Mr Butterfield's death had been ruled a poisoning.  When I handed the report back to Holmes, he said, "Lawrenson was pushed to his death in his own home.  I realise I haven't given you the details, Watson, but that was the long and short of it.  He was not a well man, and his mother generally took care of him.  She left him alone for a few hours, and came back to find him at the bottom of the stairs, his neck broken.  Given that he had no business being at the top of the stairs, I offered myself to Thorton to look into the matter."

Thorton was nodding.  "And I'm glad to have your help, Mr Holmes.  Have you had any success in finding a connection between our victims?"

Holmes's face lit up.  He was as a dog upon a scent, keen on showing his master the trail.  Not that Thorton could ever be considered master of Sherlock Holmes.  Out of his jacket pocket Holmes pulled the folded up family tree that had brought him to his conclusion.  Thorton cleared a space, and they laid it out on the desk.

"I knew I had seen their names all in one place," Holmes explained.  "They are all second cousins to one another, and third cousins to the Earl."

"Someone has designs upon the title," Thorton said, catching on immediately.  He began to run his finger along the lines of succession, frowning in thought.  Then he stopped abruptly.  "Oh, no," he said.

We waited.

Thorton sighed and showed us.  James Carmichael was, according to the lineage, a distant sixth for the title of Earl.  When we eliminated the three names that needed eliminating, he rose to third in line.

Holmes's brow creased briefly in confusion, mirroring my own expression.  A moment later his confusion cleared.

"Watson, you said it yourself," said he.  "Something is about to happen that would catalyse this mad scramble for position, not to the Earl, but to Mr Carmichael."

"He's getting married next week," Thorton confirmed.

Holmes did not bother to conceal his smirk of triumph.  I felt the familiar thrill in my chest that came from being in the presence of Holmes's genius and energy.  Our eyes met and held, and I found myself stifling a grin of excitement.

Still looking at me, Holmes said, "Place a constable at the manor, for the Earl's safety, and find Carmichael.  Stephen Dunlow, Eustace Butterfield, and Arthur Lawrenson have been cruelly used."

"This isn't like him, Mr Holmes," Thorton protested.  "I know James, we were friends when we were lads—"

"Thorton," Holmes snapped, "I did not ask you to lock him up forever.  Watson and I will visit the other names on this list and establish their whereabouts, while you locate our prime suspect and do likewise.  Until we have all the facts, we will not theorise.  All the same, I suggest you get a warrant."

#

It took far more time to track down our suspects than to interview them.  The first, a shopkeeper called Harrison Willoughby, was rewinding bolts of cloth when we pushed open the door to his shop.  Holmes took one look at him and said, "No," with such disgust that Willoughby almost took offence.  The second, a solicitor named Thomas Nelson, kept us waiting for three quarters of an hour before he would see us in his office.  He was a small man, with shrewd eyes and a long, pointed nose, down which he looked at us as Holmes queried him regarding his whereabouts.  Some answer that he gave eventually changed Holmes's mind, for he ended the conversation abruptly and we left.  Both men were given a short and vague warning about who they associated with in the very near future, so vague that I was certain they both reevaluated their view of Holmes, from eccentric genius to madman.

By the time we returned to Thorton, James Carmichael had been located.  It being Saturday, he was not in London, and he had come willingly to the station, not wishing to cause a fuss.  Thorton told us this as we stood outside his office where Carmichael waited.  He also told us that Carmichael had been, in his opinion, genuinely horrified to hear that Dunlow had been killed, and shocked to learn that he was a suspect.  He had an alibi for the first two murders, though Thorton had not verified them yet.  For the third, he had been at home alone.  He'd also asked to speak to his solicitor, and had been politely but firmly silent since then.

Holmes made a noise of consideration, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth.  Thorton and I watched him for a long moment, hoping he would elaborate, and then exchanged a look when no explanation was forthcoming.

Finally, Thorton said, "I can keep him overnight, Mr Holmes, but without any hard evidence I'll have to let him go tomorrow afternoon."

"Fine," Holmes said, breaking from his reverie.  "Perhaps a night in a cell will make him amenable to conversation.  Let him see his bloody solicitor, but Watson and I will be back in the morning for a proper interrogation."

#

The air that night was cool and crisp, and over the cliff we could hear the crash and rumble of the sea.  We sat on the patio after supper, contemplating the fate of James Carmichael.  Holmes smoked absently on a cherrywood pipe I didn't recognise, gazing up out at the ocean.  Above us, the stars numbered in the millions, or so it seemed, and I couldn't stop staring.  They were so bright, out here, away from the lights of London, and the spaces between the familiar constellations were filled in with pinpricks of sparkling light.  Whenever I went back to London after visits with Holmes, I swore that I would familiarise myself with the stars, and I never did.  They were exactly as strange and beautiful and astonishing as they ever were.  Much like Holmes himself.

"How soon do you have to be back in London?" Holmes asked, after a long period of companionable silence, during which I tried to count the number of stars I could see and failed miserably.  He tapped the pipe out in the ashtray between us, and rested his chin on his fist.

I frowned, considering it.  I had a train ticket in my bag for the day after tomorrow, but the thought of extending my visit was very welcome indeed.  I'd forgotten how alive being around Holmes made me feel; the excitement of his investigation and the pleasure of his company took me back to my younger days.  The memories were tinged with nostalgia.  Holmes and I had never had what you might call a _perfect_ friendship, but I nonetheless looked back on our fifteen-odd years spent living together as though they were the best of my life.  And, I thought to myself, they truly had been.  I missed the sort of connection I'd had with him.  I wondered if it could be salvaged, now that we remembered one another's presence.

"I ask," he went on, "because although solving a series of murders could be considered a good weekend's work, I suspect it was not as relaxing a holiday as it might have been."

"Bayne only expects me to be gone until Monday," I said, smiling.  "But perhaps I shall call him and impose upon him for a few more days."

"You're welcome to stay as long as you like," Holmes said softly.

"It must be strange for you," I said, "having someone else in your house, making noise and taking up space."

He looked at me for a moment, the corner of his mouth quirked up.  "You're not _someone_ ," he said, shaking his head.

"Well," said I, and could think of nothing else.

"And you hardly take up any more space than you used to."

I snorted.  "Very kind of you to say."

He was silent for another moment, and then he sat back again and crossed one leg over the other.  "Watson, who do you suppose I have 'round to stay, besides yourself?"

"Well," I said, giving it thought for the first time, "surely your brother—"

"Mycroft is _seventy-three_ ," Holmes said.  "If you thought he was sedentary at forty-one, you'd have trouble distinguishing him from a small boulder now."

"Inspector Lestrade?"

"Retired, and very happy to come down for the day, but so utterly set in his ways that he neither wishes nor is invited to spend the night."

I had exhausted the list of people I imagined Holmes would put up with long enough to consider a house guest.  I chewed on my thumbnail for a while.

"Mycroft has never been here?"

"Never.  If I want to see him, I get on the train myself.  I'd expect nothing less, to be perfectly honest."

"So you keep the guest room made up for me," I said, "and me alone."

Holmes looked away, out to the dark, invisible ocean.  "Of course," he said.

"You could turn it into a study," I suggested.  "Or a library.  My goodness, Holmes; you could get all your books out of those trunks in the attic—"

"No," he said.  "I like them in the trunks."

"You can't read any of them if they're in trunks."

His mouth tightened, the way it did when he was annoyed.  His hand was clenched around the bowl of his pipe.  "I'm not setting up a library in your room."

"It's not my room, Holmes," I said, embarrassed and confused.

"Well, it could be!" he snapped, and then closed his eyes in mortification.  His face was not as unreadable as he surely hoped.  It was drawn and sad, the lines around his mouth deeper than I'd seen them.  When he opened his eyes again, they were unfathomable.  He opened his mouth, perhaps to explain himself, and then decided better of it.  Without another word, he got up from the patio and went inside.  I heard the door to his bedroom close with a decisive thump, and I was alone.

I half expected him to come back, but he did not.  For nearly an hour I sat on the patio, staring at the stars and lulled into a meditative state by the rhythmic boom of the waves upon the sand.  I considered my options.  

I quickly discarded the notion of going in and forcing a confession from him.  That had never occurred to me in the past, and would not be my course of action now.  It would never work.  

I could finish my visit here, pretending the conversation had never occurred, and go back to London at the end of the week-end as I had planned.  Holmes and I would write, perhaps we would talk on the telephone once or twice, but the unspoken agreement not to mention this moment would drive a wedge between us.  Slowly but surely we would drift apart once more, and then it would be weeks since I'd heard anything from him and months since I'd seen him.  We would live our separate lives, perhaps I would publish a few more of his cases, but the guest room would go unused and someday it might become a library after all.

Or, I could wait and see what came of this admission, this acknowledgement of possibility.  Moving to Sussex had never occurred to me, but then, I had never imagined I was so welcome.  He had left London so abruptly I'd scarcely had time to react, let alone consider accompanying him.

I thought about the ocean: its vast, endless churning; its tides surging in and out, beholden to the tug of the moon.  Over the cliff, invisible, it was an unknown, unknowable entity.  But I had been swimming in the ocean, and I knew how to navigate its treacherous pull.  I knew how to respect its moods.  I knew that the tide always came back in.

I went inside and I passed Holmes's closed door with a kind of renewed faith.  I wouldn't let his refusal to face what had lain dormant between us for so long frighten me.  I was old enough; I might consider retiring myself.  If he would have me after all, I could be very happy out here.


	3. Sunday

Sunday morning was bright and clear, with the wind blowing steadily off the sea and bringing with it a salty sense of purpose. Or, at least, that was how I saw it, as Holmes and I rode once more into town. Holmes had impatiently consumed two cups of tea while I had wolfed down eggs on toast and a cup of coffee that morning, but he hadn't actually complained or hurried me along. Nor did he make any mention of his outburst the night before. Now wasn't the time. We had a murderer to catch, and distracting Holmes with reminiscence about the old days, or conjecturing about what might become of us, just wouldn't do. I tamped down my blasted romantic nature and kept my mouth shut. It would arise naturally, or I was damned.

Fulworth was quiet and still that morning, and Holmes reminded me that most people were probably at one of the two local churches situated at opposite ends of the High Street. The shops were all closed and the kitchen gardens all empty, though some of them had linens and laundry hanging on lines, blowing in the breeze. In London, a fellow could stop by the chemist's on a Sunday morning, or buy a newspaper, or even see his tailor. Not so in Fulworth, it appeared. I might have to get used to the notion. I probably would get used to the notion very quickly.

Holmes parked his automobile and we got out. He was wearing a light summer suit that made him look very dapper indeed, if not as tall as some of his slim-cut black suits used to make him look. Upon his head he wore a sennit hat with a striped ribbon. I'd never seen the hat before today, but I was already strangely fond of it. He caught me eyeing it and took it off, looking a bit sheepish.

"No, no," I said quickly, "it suits you very well."

"I don't know why I bought it," he muttered as we walked up to the police station door. The door was locked, but Thorton had assured us he would be there by nine.

"I think it's very dashing," I said, taking it from him and placing it back upon his head.

A smile touched the corner of his mouth, and dropped his eyes to the pavement. Good heavens, was he shy? He had always been rather vain, but he had never needed my approval in that regard. I let my fingers linger on the brim of the hat, adjusting it.

"Well," he said, "thank you. When I saw it, I thought of you."

"Sennit hats look absurd on me," I said. "Especially now. Downright ridiculous."

"I'll trust your judgment," Holmes said, grinning.

The station door was being unlocked from the inside, and we both looked up in surprise at the sound. Thorton pulled the door open.

"Come in, gentlemen." As he led us inside, he said, "Mr Carmichael is ready to answer your questions, Mr Holmes. His solicitor is here as well."

"You're looking a bit peaky, Thorton," Holmes said. "Doctor Watson would undoubtedly advise you to get more sleep."

"I'd never presume," I said to Thorton, giving Holmes a sharp nudge with my elbow.

Thorton nodded to us. "To be honest, Doctor, you wouldn't be wrong. We're just so close to the solution, is all, and I have a bad habit of letting things slide when I'm working."

"That sounds very familiar," I muttered.

"They're in here, gentlemen."

Carmichael had spent the night in gaol, and he looked like it. He was unshaven and bedraggled, but he nevertheless was sitting up straight with his stiff upper lip firmly in place. He regarded Holmes coolly as Thorton introduced us. The solicitor was the man Nelson we'd interrogated the afternoon before. The town simply wasn't big enough for there to be another.

Thorton directed the interview masterfully, with only the slightest bit of interference from Holmes. Yes, Carmichael had heard of the deaths and he was aware that they were being treated as murders. No, he had not been in Fulworth during the times of death determined by the coroner. Yes, he was aware that he was related to each of the murdered men. Yes, he was aware of how suspicious that looked. No, he didn't kill them.

"I don't know what to tell you gentlemen," Carmichael said, looking between Thorton and Holmes. "I don't see how I'd benefit from their deaths, really. I love my work. I'm getting married. I don't _want_ a title. I don't know what I'd do with a house that big. Don't you see? This has nothing to do with me."

Holmes made a noise of impatience and pulled me by the elbow out of the cell. We went around the corner and he began to pace the length of the station, which only took him half a dozen steps away from me before he was pivoting and coming back.

"I'm missing something," he said. "There isn't enough evidence to make any concrete deductions on. Or perhaps it's everywhere and I'm getting soft."

"You're not getting soft," I told him. "I don't think I'd have noticed the family connection. It makes perfect sense."

"No it _doesn't_!" he cried. "Nothing makes sense. I'm certain of it now: he didn't kill any of them. He has the motive, but not the guile. The poison is circumstantial, at any rate, and no good for anything!"

I reached out for him, wishing I could soothe his mind. I wondered if it really were a product of age, that we had neglected something vital because of our distance from the Work. I knew Holmes had worked on a few little puzzles since his retirement, but perhaps it was my presence as a companion that skewed his ability. Perhaps he was approaching this as though we were still based at Baker Street, not twenty years distant from that reality.

"We'll look at the facts again," I said. "You'll figure out the solution, my dear fellow, I know you will."

Holmes bared his teeth at me with no real malice and shook his head. "Dear Watson," he said. "You have such faith in me; I do hate to let you down."

He had stopped right in front of me, so I clapped him on the shoulder. "It has never been misplaced," I said.

My heart nearly stopped when his eyes met mine. He looked in that moment so plaintive and hopeful that it was everything I could do to keep the smile on my face. He wanted to impress me, to confirm everything we had ever had together, to remind himself that he was not a solitary genius but a brilliant man with a loyal friend. My soul ached for him, so I did what I could in that moment, which was to squeeze his shoulder and continue smiling. I was going to retire from practice, I thought. I was going to live with him again, and there was nothing he could do to stop me. I should have done it ages ago.

Thorton interrupted us again, leading Carmichael out of the cell with the solicitor Nelson trailing behind.

"Thank you for your time, Carmichael," Thorton was saying. "And I apologize for any inconvenience."

"Well, it certainly was inconvenient," Carmichael said. "I'm not sure being kept overnight was really necessary."

"I'm sorry," Thorton said, sounding more like his genuine self and less like a representative of the law. "We couldn't risk it."

Carmichael rubbed his wrists and thanked Nelson for coming. As the solicitor left, Carmichael said, "I understand. I'm rooting for you, Thorton, I really am. Bring this madman to justice. I'd hate to think I might be next in line for a nasty accident." They both laughed uncomfortably.

"There's no one else," Holmes muttered under his breath, but he shook hands with Carmichael and thanked him for his time. I did the same, though I'd contributed nothing whatsoever to the interrogation.

Carmichael's fiancee was waiting for him in Thorton's office. She was a plain girl, dressed in plain, well-kept clothing, with her dark hair plaited tightly down her back. When she saw Carmichael she let out a little cry and leapt up from the chair. They embraced, and her head barely peeked over his broad shoulder. I felt Holmes go rigid at my side.

"Who else," he hissed in my ear, "might benefit from Mr Carmichael's potential rise to money and title?"

"You don't think—" I protested, but now I couldn't not think it.

Holmes blocked their exit from the office, and I took up a position immediately behind him. Thorton, trapped between us and the couple, read Holmes's intent immediately.

"Miss Agnew," he said, to the fiancee, "can you tell us where you were on the fourth of June?"

Carmichael let go of his bride-to-be, Miss Agnew, and spun upon the Inspector.

"How dare you, Thorton! How dare you imply Betty had something to do with this. After all that, you want to drag her in, too?"

"I'm merely trying to ascertain the lady's whereabouts," Thorton said smoothly, "so that she can corroborate where you were at the relevant times."

"I was at my job," Miss Agnew said.

"Don't answer him, Betty," Carmichael said, grasping her hands. "Talk to Mr Nelson first, for god's sake. He's just left; I'm sure we can catch him."

"It's all right, James," Miss Agnew said.

"Then you won't have any problem sitting down and talking to us for a moment, will you, Miss Agnew?"

"Not at all," she said, and took her seat again.

"Where is it that you work, Miss Agnew?" Holmes asked.

"With Mr Simmons. I am his assistant."

"Mr Simmons is the chemist, is he not?"

"Yes, sir, he is."

"Do you have access to the compounds or medications Mr Simmons works with?"

"No, sir," Miss Agnew said. "Mr Simmons handles all the chemicals himself. I am only permitted to help customers and write orders when we don't have what we need in the shop."

"You were sick on the fourth," Carmichael said suddenly.

She looked at him sharply. "What on earth do you mean, James?"

"The fourth of June, you had a summer cold. You said you were going to stay home that day and rest."

"Oh," Miss Agnew laughed. "Yes, dear, but I felt much better after you'd gone to the station."

"You were in bed when I came back from London," he said. "I brought you soup."

She was shaking her head. "It was very sweet of you, darling, but I'd just come home again when you arrived." She glanced at Holmes and Thorton and me, and then back at her fiance.

"Miss Agnew," Thorton began again.

"That's enough, Thorton," Carmichael snapped. "Let's go, Betty."

They departed, Carmichael leading Miss Agnew by the hand and giving us a dirty look over his shoulder.

"We have to talk to Simmons," Holmes said, snatching his hat from the coatrack by the station door.

"It's Sunday, Mr Holmes," Thorton protested.

Holmes scoffed. "I'll find him at church, then."

"Holmes, you cannot barge in on a religious service to question a witness," I said, hurrying out the door after him. "Holmes!"

He was striding away down the street, deaf to my hails. I couldn't catch up: my leg protested immediately, and I had to slow down. So I followed at an ever-increasing distance, cursing my wound and Holmes in the same breath. He hadn't changed, I thought. Nothing would get in his way, in the pursuit of an answer to a puzzle.

Then I realized he had turned around and was coming back towards me.

"Watson," he said as he approached, "that was intolerable of me."

"What, leaving me behind?" I asked. "Well, it was rather rude, but I expect nothing less from you when you're after a scent."

He took my arm. "I am already on bad enough terms with the Vicar, as it is. We'd better wait."

#

An hour later, after a leisurely tour of the High Street of Fulworth, we accosted the chemist, Mr Simmons, outside the churchyard. He was a small, balding man with round glasses on a round face, and he confirmed, as Holmes had suspected, that Miss Agnew had not come to work on June the fourth.

"She was ill," he said, in a high, nasal voice. "She sent a note. I didn't see her all day."

"Why would she say that?" Holmes mused as we headed back to the police station. "So easily confirmed or disproven a statement; surely if she was clever enough to poison two, possibly three, people, she could come up with something less obvious."

"Two of those poisonings were in very close succession," I reminded him. "That's not very clever."

He smiled, his grey eyes sparkling.

Holmes was already calling for Thorton when we arrived back at the station, but we stopped short in the main office at the tableau laid out in front of us.

Miss Betty Agnew was handcuffed and being restrained by Thorton and another officer. She was struggling against her captors, trying to reach James Carmichael, who stood halfway across the room from her, his hands covering his face. 

"I did it for you!" she was crying. "For you, James! For us!"

Thorton and the other officer began to lead her away.

"No one was supposed to know!" she screamed.

"Well," Holmes said in an undertone, "that went a bit differently than I expected."

Ten minutes later, Thorton was back with us in his office, beaming with professional pride while also attempting to exude an air of gravitas. It made him look a bit pompous.

"Sometimes it's a good old fashioned case of people being decent, Mr Holmes," he said, his fingers laced upon his desk. "Poor man; I'm sure I don't know what I'd do in his position."

"What, finding out your intended was a serial poisoner?" Holmes inquired dryly. His mouth was pinched in a tight little line: he was disappointed he hadn't unraveled the whole thing before Carmichael had had an attack of conscience. Miss Agnew had admitted everything to Carmichael, had trusted him with her secret, but he hadn't wanted that burden laid upon his shoulders.

Thorton ignored Holmes's sarcasm. "It's a damn shame, excuse my language."

"Of course," muttered Holmes.

"You think you know a person," Thorton mused. "She's accounted for all of it: the push down the stairs, the cyanide in the tea, the arsenic in the scone."

I made a face. Holmes nearly smiled at me.

"Dreadful business. Well, it's a relief to have it sorted. Thank you again for your help, Mr Holmes. And to you, Doctor. It was a pleasure to meet you, although the circumstances are not ones that I would exactly hope for."

"No," I agreed, "but trouble does seem to follow me around."

That time Holmes did smile. "Come on, Watson," said he. "We'll have to find something with which to fill the rest of your Sunday. I'm afraid we may have peaked a little early."

I fought the blush that rose to my cheeks. Thorton showed us out of the office, and we shook hands one final time. Then he waved as we got into the automobile. It was barely noon, and we'd caught a murderer. I thought we'd done very well for ourselves. 

But there was still the matter of the guest room.

#

We did not address the matter immediately. Holmes drove us back to his cottage for a light lunch, and then we set off in the opposite direction of town to pay a visit to his acquaintance Stackhurst at a nearby preparatory school. We were given a tour of the school and tea in Stackhurst's private apartment, and briefly I doubted the necessity of my permanent residence in Sussex. Perhaps Holmes and Stackhurst did not share the same intimate friendship Holmes and _I_ had shared, but they were very comfortable with one another. Holmes said nothing of the murder investigation—as a rule, we did not discuss such things with outsiders until they were well and truly situated in history—and instead filled the afternoon with a hundred other subjects. He was rarely so talkative, except in the presence of good friends, and so I was to understand that Stackhurst ranked among those he counted as friends.

Doubted it, until I realized that Holmes was putting on airs. He was avoiding being alone with me again, and kept finding new avenues of conversation to keep us all occupied. By the time the sun was going down we had taken up the entirety of Stackhurst's single afternoon off, and I had to suggest three separate times that we let the man prepare for his coming week.

Holmes drove us home in something approaching a sulk, but it had changed to simple agitation by the time we reached the front door of his little cottage. Inside, he lit a cigarette and began to pace, complaining about the unsatisfactory conclusion to the case.

"Why did she tell him?" he demanded, pausing at the window and glaring out. His left hand was clenched in a fist behind his back, and his long fingers flexed and curled. "What did she _think_ was going to happen?"

I took up what I hoped was a neutral position on the sofa. "She trusted him, I imagine," I said. "She thought she could confide in him. Perhaps she thought he'd be pleased. Perhaps she thought if he loved her, he'd keep her secret."

Holmes made a noise of disgust; at the secret, or at the trust, I didn't know.

"People will do strange things for love," I said, glancing at him.

I had timed it perfectly. A grimace flashed across his face, sorrow and resignation as plain as day in the curve of his lip and the crinkle of his eyes, to be replaced an instantly later by a look of carefully calculated apathy. He flicked at the end of his cigarette, knocking off the column of ash.

"That doesn't excuse a thing and you know it," he muttered, lifting the cigarette to his lips and inhaling. I watched him hold his breath, savoring the smoke, and then let it out again slowly.

"Holmes," I said.

His spine straightened almost imperceptibly. "Yes, Watson?"

"What you said, last night, about the—"

"The guest bedroom, yes," he interrupted, turning on his heel and heading toward the kitchen and the bedrooms beyond. "I think you might be right: I ought to move some of my books down from the attic."

He wasn't going to get out of the conversation that easily. "If I am going to move out here, I will still need to go back to London for a week or so to settle my affairs."

"I didn't invite you to move here," Holmes said, turning around to scowl at me. He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the bookshelf. He was tense all over, his chin lifted and his eyes flashing. He was so beautiful in that moment, angry and defensive, and he looked just the same as I'd always remembered him. He hadn't changed a bit, for everything we'd been through, together and on our own. And then again, he was entirely different. I thought about him, thirty years younger and crowing over his discovery of the reagent that precipitated haemoglobin. I wondered if that Holmes would recognize this one: stoic and distinguished and like an open book.

"No, you never did."

After a moment, Holmes said peevishly, "You were the one who left. You moved out of Baker Street, after all those years we lived together."

I threw up my hands. "I met Alice! We got along. I thought it was going to last."

"You and I were going to last," Holmes protested, gesturing at the space between us that spanned ten feet and four decades. "That wasn't the first time you moved out, either."

"You made me think you were dead for three bloody years!" I cried. "Is that any way to treat a—"

"You got married!" he shouted.

We stared at one another. A lump had risen in my throat. Holmes covered his mouth with both hands.

"Did you mean it?" I asked. My hands were shaking. "When you said it could be my bedroom?"

"No," he whispered behind his fingers.

My heart sank. I felt sick. All that, and he was still going to deny—

"Because, Watson, to be perfectly honest, I think _that_ should be your bedroom." He pointed at the open door to his own room. His expression was stone, although a muscle was jumping in his jaw. He expected me to get up and walk out. He thought I was going to leave, _again_ , right now. He thought he'd never see me again after this.

On occasion, Sherlock Holmes is an idiot.

I rose, and two steps forward crossed the chasm between us. I put my hands on his shoulders. He had gone stock-still. I'd managed to surprise him, yet again. 

"Fine," I said, "if you think there's space," and I kissed him. 

His lips were thin and a little chapped, and he tasted like salt and tobacco. It was such a familiar olfactory sensation that I gasped, despite myself, and my hand found his cheek. It was rough with stubble and warm under my fingers, the sensation strange and wonderful. Holmes drew back to look searchingly into my eyes, and what he found there must have pleased him for he muttered a curse under his breath and leaned in again. The second kiss lasted longer than the first, and when his tongue darted out to taste the seam of my lips, I welcomed him.

I hadn't kissed anyone like this in a very long time. The passion was restrained, cautious, but it was there under the surface of our uncertainty. Holmes's hands found my waist and slid carefully along the silk of my waistcoat to the small of my back. With his body against mine, I found myself responding to his gentle caresses, and I tipped my head to one side to kiss him more deeply. He sighed softly, his fingers curling, and I slid my hand into his hair, cradling his occipital bone.

I don't know how long we stood there, exchanging kisses. It felt like an age. I was trying to make up for all the lost time and Holmes was drinking it in. His grip tightened gradually, until I was entirely enfolded in his arms and couldn't have extracted myself if I'd wanted to. It was nothing like even the more amorous embraces I'd exchanged with the women of my acquaintance. Holmes's physical power was utterly unmistakable, and I found it quite exciting to be held like that: tenderly and possessively all at once.

When we drew apart, Holmes pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes closed. His hands relaxed their grip on my waistcoat, and he smoothed the fabric down again. Against my thigh I could feel he was aroused.

"Should you like to go see if there's space?" I asked in an undertone.

He huffed a laugh and opened his eyes: they were gunmetal and gleaming under his severe brow. "God, yes," he said.

Taking my hand in his, he led me across the threshold of his bedroom. He left the door wide open behind us. We'd never have done something so rash at Baker Street if we'd been in this situation, but we were not at Baker Street. Holmes turned on the lamp at his bedside, and it cast a warm, electric glow throughout the room.

We hesitated, but I gathered my courage around me and reached for his collar. He smiled gratefully and began to unbutton my waistcoat. We undressed one another slowly, baring our bodies to each other and the cool night air.

I had gotten fat in my old age, the life of frenetic activity at Holmes's side inevitably giving way to armchair physic and aching joints. My wounds from Afghanistan were now ancient history, the scar in my left shoulder almost invisible to the eye and the hole in my right thigh an impeccable barometer. Holmes's fingers found the former unerringly, and he spent a long moment fascinated by it. I suspect if I hadn't been trying to get his trousers off of him, he'd have explored its nuances forever.

"Later," I promised, untying his drawers and letting them fall.

He grinned at me.

Now I could appreciate what I'd only glimpsed the morning before. As Holmes stepped out of his pants and kicked them away, I ran my eyes and then my hands over him in reverence. I bent my head and kissed the slope of his shoulders, the column of his throat. I carded my fingers through his thinning silver hair and touched my lips to the crest of his widow's peak. He breathed out shakily against my collarbone and held on tightly to my ribs.

"John," he said, his voice a low whisper. I paused, thinking he would make some request, but he didn't go on.

I swept my hands down the length of his spine, and as I did so I remembered the scar I had seen. It was situated a few inches above the crest of his ilium, and when I encountered it he broke into a smile.

"Your presence would not have saved me," he said.

"It certainly would have," I protested, giving him a poke. "I'd have sewn you up properly, at any rate."

Holmes smiled, a melancholy sort of smile. "That would have been valuable," he admitted.

"I wish you would—"

"Not now," he said, and pulled back the quilt on his bed.

Holmes pressed me into the mattress and climbed astride my hips. His prick was fully erect between us, and I boldly reached down to encircle it with my hand. He shuddered and gasped, his hands finding the pillow beneath my head for support. His face was flushed, his eyelids fluttering, and I lifted my head to kiss his parted lips.

Touching another man's cock was not so strange as I might have expected. In my writings, I had boasted of experience with women that spanned three continents, but in all my years I had never gone to bed with men. Holmes was the exception, as always, and I found I had no reservations whatsoever when it came to him. He was beautifully responsive to my touch. He shivered and arched and breathed heavily as I manipulated him, his mouth open and his eyes squeezed shut.

My other hand, the one that was not occupied with stroking him slowly from root to crown, swept across the plane of his chest, caressing all the skin I could reach. I could smell the warm, musky scent of our mutual excitement—stronger than I was used to, and altogether different from the distantly remembered smell of my wife—but it was overlaid with the smell of home; nights by the fireside at Baker Street rushed back to me when I breathed in deeply. My own erection brushed against my fingers, and a moment later Holmes had shifted his weight onto one hand, in order to reach between us and take hold of it. I groaned.

But soon he was shaking his head and grimacing. He rolled to one side, resting on his hip beside me, and rubbed irritably at his knee.

"Blasted thing," he muttered, stretching out his leg.

I took the opportunity to reverse our positions and insinuated myself between his parted knees. He smiled shyly up at me, lifting his hands to cup my face. We kissed again, his mouth warm and insistent. I took his wrist in my hand and kissed my way down his forearm, over more old scars: lye burn here, knife wound there, puncture marks at the crook of his elbow.

"Watson," he scolded, pulling back, but I held tight and kissed those in particular again. I might not have loved everything he'd ever done, but I couldn't separate them from who he was.

Holmes sighed and let me work my way slowly up to his shoulder, where I dug my teeth into the muscle of his deltoid and he shuddered hard. His cock jumped against my belly, as if reminding me of its presence. As if I could have forgotten it. I pressed my hips against his, rubbing our pricks together.

He moaned, clinging to me, and dragged me up for another kiss. My moustache brushed pleasantly against his lip and cheek, and I felt him smile. We began to move against one another, our bodies falling easily into the rhythm they were meant to know, and he hooked one leg around the back of my thigh, his wiry arms encircling my shoulders.

"God, John," he said, breaking the kiss to toss his head restlessly on the pillow.

"Yes," I said, "is this all right?"

"All _right?_ Good heavens, man, it's more than all right."

I grinned. I shifted to press against him more firmly, and my leg twinged intolerably, sending a shock of pain up through my hip. I straightened immediately, in reflex, and he divined my reaction at once.

"Look at us," Holmes muttered. "Two old fools." He crossed his arms over his bare chest and looked away from me, biting his lip.

"Old we may be, and foolish," I said, easing myself down beside him, "but I dare say that shouldn't stop us. Turn towards me, there's a good fellow, and we'll manage."

When he had obliged me, I uncrossed his arms for him and lay one over my waist. He stroked his fingers down the centre of my spine, almost unconsciously. I took his prick in hand once more. He was still proud and stiff, and he shivered at my touch. Soon I had him clutching at me, his hips pushing into the circle of my hand, his breath ragged against my cheek and neck. I kissed his throat, nibbled him there, and he said, "Stop, stop," abruptly pushing me away.

"What's—"

"I want you between my thighs," Holmes said, reaching over me for a bottle of mineral oil that stood upon the windowsill. "I want you as close as you can get, and I want us to come off at the same time."

His words made me blush, but I hid it against his shoulder as he poured oil into his hand and smeared it upon his skin. Then he was pulling me against him, sliding my prick into the warm crevasse he made with straightened legs, his own tool hot against my belly.

It was a kind of heaven, to be taking my pleasure that way, the way he wanted. I accepted the rest of his palmful of oil and slicked his cock with it, making him moan in my ear. When I thrust against him, savoring the warmth of his body and the taut muscles in his thighs, he gripped my hip hard to urge me on.

The bed squeaked on its springs, but there was no one for miles to hear it. I thrust harder, building speed, and he sank his teeth into the crook of my neck.

The only warning I got from him was a tightening of his thighs and the whispered exclamation of, "John!" against my ear, and then he was pulsing and coming in my hand. I worked him through it, my own climax rushing upon me. He groaned aloud, flexing his hips, and I was done for. I spilled between his thighs with a shudder and a curse, lit up with pleasure inside.

Holmes soothed the bite on my neck with his tongue, kissed it apologetically, and relaxed. We lay panting together for a few minutes, exchanging soft kisses and shy caresses now that the blaze of our passion had subsided. Holmes's hair was in disarray, sticking up in at least three absurd directions, but I kept the knowledge to myself.

It was not very late— barely half-past nine, if I calculated correctly— but already I felt the post-coital drag of sleep. I struggled out of bed to find something to wipe us off with, and returned to Holmes's arms with a flannel in hand. Once we were marginally cleaned, he threw it to the floor and tucked me against him, tangling our limbs and trapping me effectively. I settled into his embrace with a murmur of appreciation. He was warm and smelled like clean exertion, and the rhythm of his heartbeat where I lay my head against his chest lulled me quickly into slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As an aside, [I suggest you take a look at this gorgeous bit of art by ireallyshouldbedrawing.](http://ireallyshouldbedrawing.tumblr.com/image/76565590130) It's not affiliated with this fic, but it bloody well should be. :D


	4. Monday

Waking on a cloudless June morning with Sherlock Holmes's head upon your shoulder is one of the most sublime experiences a Doctor of a certain age can have. I didn't know it at the time, but waking on a snowy December morning with his cold toes upon your ankles and his nose against the back of your neck, spooned together with him and slightly too warm under a mountain of down comforters and quilts, is even more spectacular. That first morning of what was to be many, I became aware first of the weight of his body against mine, settled along my side and half on top of me. Then I felt his breathing, shallow and steady, gusting across my bare skin. Finally, when I opened my eyes, I was treated to the sight of his balding crown a few inches from my face, which I took the opportunity to kiss very gently.

In truth, it was not the first time Holmes and I had slept together. I could recall a few occasions, in our youth, when it had been a necessity. Once, a tremendous snowstorm prevented us from returning to London from a week spend in the north on a case, and we had shared a dormer room in an overcrowded inn, lying side by side in a double bed and resolutely not touching one another. Another time, upon the trail of a suspected serial murderer, we had caught a few hours of shut-eye on a mattress on the floor of one of Holmes's bolt holes that he kept around London. I regretted that we hadn't done it more often.

He must have felt me stirring, for I heard him inhale deeply as he came awake, and then he was lifting his head, evidently surprised to find me still in place beneath him.

"Watson," he said, looking up into my face.

"Good morning, my dear fellow," said I.

Unceremoniously, Holmes rolled away from me, got out of bed, and collected his drawers from the floor. His back was to me, so I watched in unabashed appreciation as he stepped into them, tied the flies, and then plucked his shirt from the dresser and slipped it on. When he turned to face me again, it was buttoned almost all the way up to his clavicle, and he was rolling up his sleeves.

"Coffee?" he asked, in a voice that was designed to sound casual.

"Thank you," I said, and threw the quilt off. Nude, I exited his bedroom and went into mine for my dressing gown. I could feel his eyes on me all the way. I put on my dressing gown and tied the belt, but I let the lapels gape. I know full well how to seduce a person without seeming to, even if that person is Sherlock Holmes.

When I emerged again only moments later and raised an eyebrow at his lack of progress towards the coffee he had just promised, he shook himself, blushing charmingly, and hurried into the kitchen. I heard him banging about in there, running the tap, and putting the water on to boil. I went to sit on the sofa and gazed out the window. The sea was quiet this morning, and I could barely hear the surf over the edge of the cliff.

A few minutes later, Holmes put a steaming cup in my hands and retreated to south window where he stood with his back ram-rod straight and the curve of his arse just visible through the thin fabric of his drawers. The coffee was black and strong, and I blew across the top before I took a second sip.

"We need to talk," Holmes said finally, as though the words were wrenched out of him.

"Yes," I agreed.

"I understand you may not… feel about me the way— the way I feel about you," he said, still staring resolutely out the window, "but I want you to know that it's all right. I don't expect anything. I just— I want to have you near me."

"Holmes," I said, "I think, perhaps, we have an exaggerated case of… the way things have always been."

He glanced at me, brow furrowed. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, that you are miles ahead of me, as always, and I am ever struggling to catch up."

Holmes shook his head fractionally, still not understanding. I was not being very clear.

"This—" I said, and wasn't sure how or what I wanted to indicate, so I settled with, "—week-end has been very enlightening. Sometimes I need to be led by then hand, Holmes, to see what I've been missing."

He swallowed hard and said nothing.

"Ever since I met you, I've been fond of you."

His mouth twitched; a bitter little twist that told me everything and more about what he expected me to say.

"When you… went away," I said, "in '91, I was really very distraught. Mary didn't know what to do with me. She did her best, the dear woman, but there really wasn't much for it besides time. I thought I was nearly healed of it all when she… passed. But losing her made me think inevitably of you, and— well, things had got quite bad when you came back." I looked down at my coffee cup. I never thought I'd be telling Holmes this, let alone after a night in his bed and a stunning set of mutual orgasms. "I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't come back," I admitted.

He made a little noise, part acknowledgement and part distress, and I managed to look back up at him. His jaw was tight, but he met my eyes.

"At any rate, everything was different after that. You and I, we were different. I thought everything was going to be exactly as it had been, but then there was Alice, and you had your work in America, and—" I broke off, trying to remember where I'd been going.

Alice Evans was a woman I'd gotten to know in the late 90's, and in 1901 we began seeing quite a bit of each other. She and her husband had separated and he had gone to India, so we couldn't be married, but in 1902 we had decided to co-habitate. I left Holmes a second time and returned to practice, and he had seemed entirely unconcerned to see me go. Oh, he assured me he would miss me, but he was quite ridiculously wealthy— "comfortable" was the euphemism Mrs Hudson had used— and we no longer needed to go halves on a set of rooms. It had all seemed so straightforward. 

The next year, Holmes had bought this very cottage. Six or seven months later, in the early part of 1904, Alice's husband returned from India and wrote beseechingly to her, begging her to come back to him. I had been on my own ever since. Holmes had never asked after her health in the time I'd been with her, never brought her up of his own accord. Now I understood.

"I've missed you terribly," I said. I was unable to qualify the intervening score of years. I had friends and colleagues aplenty in London, but none of them ever amounted to anything near what Holmes meant to me. "I'm not going to say I was glad for the war, but it did bring you back to me."

"I wrote you so many letters while I was in Chicago," Holmes said softly.

"What letters? I never got a single one from you. Your brother said you were almost entirely cut off—"

Holmes shook his head. "I never sent any of them. But I wrote to you all the time. I suppose they're all up in the attic still, tucked away somewhere."

"What did you write?"

"Absurd things," he said. "How very much I missed you was the primary refrain. I should have burned them."

"Perhaps if you'd sent them, I'd have figured it all out sooner."

He smiled at me sadly. "Perhaps you would have, but you know how I feel about compromising correspondence."

"I didn't make love to you because I pity you," I said, coming back around to the point I'd been trying to make. "I would never do that to you."

"Is that what that was?"

"Yes," I said firmly.

"If you are going to move in here," he said, coming toward me at last, "I think you should do it immediately."

"Bayne will buy my practice," I said. "He's been talking about expanding." I reached out and, taking Holmes's hand, drew him onto the sofa beside me. "I do have a few more cases of yours I've been thinking of writing up."

That made him smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "I'll let you have the desk by the window."

"No," I protested, "that's—"

"I set it up there with you in mind," he admitted, ducking his chin.

"It is a splendid view."

Holmes looked up again, hesitated, and then leaned forward to kiss me. I met him in the middle, lifting a hand to cup his face.

When we parted, he pressed his forehead against mine. His eyes were still closed. Then he laughed and opened them. "When is your train?"

"Ten-oh-seven," I said.

"Time for a walk on the beach before then?"

"Yes, if you can suffer an old campaigner going at a snail's pace."

"Always," Holmes said.

#

Holmes saw me off at the train station, his tweed cap clutched tightly in his hands. I watched him from the compartment until he'd vanished around a bend, and then spent the rest of the trip up to London aching to be on my way back to him already. When I arrived in Euston Station I sent him a telegram just to irritate him.

Bayne was, of course, baffled by my insistence that he take over my practice, as well as eager to do just that. He bought it for twice what I'd paid for it, which was exactly what it was worth, and said he might rent out the rooms above it. I didn't give a damn what he did with the place.

It took me two days to pack. My belongings hardly amounted to much, even now. I retrieved my old tin dispatch box from Cox and Co. and tucked it safely inside my trunk with my faded dress uniform and my service revolver. My books and medical texts, precious gramophone records, and faded issues of the _Strand_ magazine went in another trunk, although I suspected Holmes had copies of his own. The furniture I left for Bayne.

On Thursday, I began to telephone or visit each of my patients and explained the situation. Most of them had nothing but hearty handshakes and congratulations for me. A few expressed disappointment that I was departing with so little notice, but I assured them that Dr Bayne was a satisfactory replacement for me, and a man I trusted to care for them. I didn't know whether these would be the last doctor-patient interactions I would have, and so I tried to make my late clinical instructor proud. I _did_ know that my bedside manor would be absolutely rubbish after a month with Holmes again.

By Friday evening, I had sent my belongings on ahead of me and I itched to follow. But I had promised Stamford that I would meet him for a drink in the Strand, and I owed him much more than I could ever tell him.

He clapped me on the back when we met, his gnarled hand squeezing my shoulder. For a moment I couldn't speak: my eyes stung and my throat closed up. Then I shook myself, embarrassed, and managed, "Stamford, my very good man."

We shared a pint and a meal, and he laughed when I said I was leaving London in the morning.

"I thought you'd be gone ages ago," he admitted. "After Holmes. I'm surprised you stuck around as long as you did."

"Well," I hedged, "we went our separate ways."

"Don't tell him I said it," Stamford said, leaning in close over his half-empty glass, "but I think you deserve one another. I'm glad you're going."

I stared at him, only remembering after a moment or two to close my mouth. 

He shrugged and refused to elaborate.

When at last we parted, knowing it might be the last time we ever saw one another, he shook my hand firmly.

"Thank you," I said.

Stamford smiled, understanding me. "You're welcome," he said simply, and we left it at that.

My rooms were empty of all my belongings. My valise was in the corner, waiting for me to take it up in the morning.

 _To hell with it all_ , I thought, picking it up right then. I put my hat back upon my head, locked the front door behind me, and dropped the key in Bayne's letter slot. A hansom was at hand, and in ten minutes I was at Euston Station once more.

#

The train arrived at Fulworth at a quarter past ten, and I was one of three passengers disembarking. I let the porter carry my valise to the single dogcart waiting at the cab stand. My heart was in my throat as we rode, but finally my desire for the element of surprise won out over my impatience, and I had the driver leave me half a mile from Holmes's cottage.

I walked the rest of the way. The stars above me were uncountable, infinite, and sparkling in their brilliance. The swath of the Milky Way was visible across the sky, arcing over the meadow. Against it, the shape of the cottage was cut out in black, and a light shone in the sitting room window. Beyond the cliffs the ocean boomed arrhythmically, its retreating hiss drowned out by the rustle of the wind in the grass. The air was cool upon my face, pricking my cheeks and the tip of my nose.

Distantly, I heard the call of a night bird, and then the scream of a fox. As I got closer to the house, I could hear tinny strains of familiar music; Holmes was playing one of my records on his gramophone. His shadow moved across the window, and my heart began to beat double-time.

I paused on the doorstep, holding my breath and listening to the music. Holmes was humming along. He hadn't heard me. The door was unlocked. Of course it was. I doubted he ever locked it, even when he went to town.

When the door creaked on its hinges, Holmes whirled around in surprise. He had opened my trunk but not unpacked it; I guessed that if I'd come in the morning as planned, it would appear wholly intact and untampered with, but now I could see it had been decidedly rifled. Holmes raised his palms, as I looked between him and the trunk, and began to explain himself.

"I don't give a damn," I said, before he could apologise or make any excuses. I dropped my valise on the floor by the door and crossed the room. I took his outstretched hands in mine, kissed both weathered sets of knuckles in greeting, and then kissed him softly on the mouth. "You should get used to listening to them, after all. They're not going anywhere, and neither am I."


End file.
